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HOPE 
UNDEFERRED 

AND 

TWO OTHER POEMS 



BY 
REV. CHARLES JOSIAH ADAMS, D.D. 

Author of 

Where Is My Dog; or, Is Man Alone Iminortalf 

The Racing Parson; or. How Baldy Won the 

County Seat. Robert G. Ingersoll, et al., 

and the Clerical Attire^ Etc. Reprieve 

and Other Poems, Etc.j, Etc, 



NEW YORK: 

J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

57 Rose Street 



"~l 



HOPE 
UNDEFERRED 

AND 

TWO OTHER POEMS 



BY 
REV. CHARLES JOSIAH ADAMS, D.D. 

Author of 

Where Is My Dog; or, Is Man Alone Immortal? 

The Racing Parson; or^ How Baldy Won the 

County Seat. Robert G. Ingersoll, et al.^ 

and the Clerical Attire^ Etc. Reprieve 

and Other Poems^ Etc., Etc. 



CoPYsiGHT, 1916, BY Chakles Josiah Adams 



NEW YORK: 

J. S. OGILVIE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

57 Rose Street 






^T.A 







NOV ~4 I9IB 
'CI.A446316 



s* 



r^- To Mr. Walter Winans — the finest pistol shot 

in the world; who shoots as truly with his mind; 
who, a quarter of a century ago, upon a copy of my 
Where Is My Dog; or, Is Man Alone Immortal? 
falling into his hands, wrote to me sympathetically 
with relation to what I have so long been trying to 
get to the human mind through my work in Bio- 
pJiilism; and who, very recently, sent me the story 
of the dog of the Fourth Dimension, which I have 
incorporated in Hope Undeferred — I take the 
liberty of dedicating that poem. 

Charles Josiah Adams. 



A WORD IN ADVANCE. 

Suppose one to be accoided, through his physical 
Senses, with matter of only length. He knows nothing 
not before him, or behind. Add width, with the neces- 
sary organic correlation. He knows things to this side 
of him and to that. Add thickness. And he knows 
things above him and below. 

This is our situation — from the man to the cricket, 
which hops, tumblingly, in front of him as he takes his 
*' constitutional " in the course of these autumn days. 
We are accorded to matter in three dimensions — length, 
breadth and thickness. 

May there not be a fourth dimension, to which most 
of us are not accorded? May there not be those who 
are so accorded? May not the fourth dimension be the 
dimension towards which we are going ? — The additional 
dimension to which we will be accorded after death? — 
The dimension in which those of *'the great majority" 
now have their being? .... 

I was relating how I had brought a ray of hope to a 
father, who had lost a daughter, by referring to the 
possibility of a fourth dimension of matter, to have a 
gentleman comment: 

* * You were reaching him through his materialism ! ' * 

*' Years ago,'^ I replied, "after I had lectured — ^not 
on The Fourth Dimension — a young man approached 
me and said, combatingly: *I'm a Materialist!' My 
answer was : ' Tell me what matter is, and 1 11 tell you 
whether I'm a Materialist 1' " . . . . 

Is there anyone who has not heard the Bishop's an- 
swers to the two sides of the same question? — ''What is 
matter? "—"Never mind!"— "What is mind?"— "No 
matter!" .... 

Long years ago, a clergyman spoke of the mental side 

5 



6 A WORD IN ADVANCE 

of matter. I put in : * * I 'd rather say, the material side 
of mind!'* — ** That's exactly it!" he generously assent- 
ed 

In Hope Undeferred, my illustrations — so far as they 
are not from Holy Writ — are out of my own experiences, 
or personal relations to me — I thinking that such illus- 
trations are more alive than those from books — such, 
even, as that of Colonel Prendergast 's falling at the battle 
of Malplaquet, in fulfilment of a prophecy to him from 
Sir John Friend, v/ho had lost his head under a charge 
of high-treason — as told by General Oglethorp to Doctors 
Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith — he having heard 
the facts related to Alexander Pope by Colonel Cecil, 
who had charge of the remains of Colonel Prendergast, 
and had read in a pocket-book found on his body a not- 
ing of the prophecy — all of which may be read in Irv- 
ing 's Oliver Goldsmith and elsewhere 

With Hope Underf erred, 1 am sending out two other 
poems— short ones. The second of these — Of One Who 
Has Thought — is commemorative of the late Bishop 
Potter — between whom and myself never arose the ques- 
tion of the Fourth Dimension, — but who was open- 
minded in relation to my holdings in Biophilism — the 
first — Has Ever Mortal Bone Better f — of a chippy. 
** Extremes meet" — in God 

I should be pleased by any comment. 

Charles Josiah Adams. 
The Bureau of Biophilism, 
Rossville, 

Staten Island, N. Y., October 2, 1916. 



HOPE UNDEFERRED. 

In London's hoary Tower, brutal, grim, 
There came to me the germ of what I sing, 
As I would improvise it at my club. 
The chancel's vested dignity forgot, 
The moment, in the Church's interest. 
And that of those who've wandered from Her gates, 
To suffer tortures till they Home return, 
Despite the Home's remoteness and defects, 
Disdainful of the simple remedy — 
In Raleigh's dungeon standing, lamp in hand 
Of guide, its flickering the dreary walls 
Suggesting rather than revealing, and 
The earthen floor, and ceiling lost in dark, 
All windowless, the door, of purpose, shut. 
Thinking of him, the gallant cavalier, 
There prisoned through the dreary lapse of years—' 
But seldomed companied by man or dog — 
Till, when by royal enemy his death 
Decreed, a voice, from out the gaping crowd, 
Exclaimed, as fell the hate-directed axe. 
And, bloody, quiv'ring, stuck in blooding block: 
* ' In England not another head so great ! ' ' 
And was Sir Walter truly held within 
These walls? Most surely — far as body went. 
His mind? In bitter consciousness of them. 
Present, for most, no doubt ; but absent oft. 
In concentration, quite as certainly — 
In brooding History, and secrets deep 
Of Nature,, chary to reveal ; and oft, 
In memory, to peaceful spots, to scenes 
Of courtly splendor, and of dallying love. 
To fields of battle, to the trackless wave, 
To ways through pathless forests, wide and high; 
And oft, on bold imagination's wings, 
Piercing the future, for the nation's fate, 

7 



8 HOPE UNDEFERRED 

And for his own, for that of human-kind ; 

And oft in tangled mystery of dreams ; 

And oft, through portals of subconsciousness, 

To intercourses words could not relate 

With spirits blessed, to conflicts with the damned- 

Or»they the portals opening to him. 

A»nd may not prisoned Raleigh symbolize 

Your ego, mine, and that of each of all, 

** Groaning" within the Sentient Universe — 

** Together" prisoned in the length and breadth 

And thickness of the which is matter called — 

Its Three Dimensions — from the freedom of 

Its Fourth Dimension, which contains the Three, 

Them penetrating more completely than 

Does air or ether any single thing? 

..4nd is there Fourth Dimension ? No surprise. 

The question coming from the criminal, 

Whose thoughts and efforts go in picking locks. 

In scaling porticos to second floors. 

In prying windows, in exploding safes. 

In counter-plotting shrewd detectives' wiles. 

In dodging gruff policemen's clubs and cuffs. 

In plotting to escape the prison's close; 

Or from the one who has the thief in mind. 

In guarding property considered his. 

Which may be carried, ridden, led away; 

Or from the one who works in metal, wood. 

Or marble, horse-shoe forming, residence. 

Or statue ; from the one who tills the soil ; 

Or from the one who, in the mountain's heart. 

With pick and shovel, claims the coal or ore ; 

Or from the one who at the throttle sits, 

His engine plunging through the storm and night; 

Or from the captain on the creaking bridge 

Of leaky ship, in fear of foundering ; 

Or from the one who pains with hand or brain, 

Or both, in keeping souls in bodies frail — 

His own and those of his ; from one who toils 

Incessantly — the whistle 's jaded slave ; 



HOPE UNDEFERRED 9 

From one who would the bankrupt's fate avoid; 

From one who still would dollars add to those 

He has already wrung ; who 'd have a place 

Still higher, trembling for the one he has — 

In word, surprising not the question from 

The one in weary touch, or panting grip 

With matter in her Three Dimensions sensed — 

Unlighted ; but astonishing in one 

In Holy Writ believing — counting not 

The ground of his accepting Holy Writ, 

E 'en though it be that Holy Writ is but 

The history, of nation first, of, then, 

A Person — the objective but of worth 

In their experiences as framing the 

Subjective — in the Three Dimensions, but 

As revelations holding of the Fourth : 

As when, to Adam, God stepped forth and spake 

In Paradise ; as when, in Endor 's mystic cave, 

The king fell prone at Samuel 's awful words ; 

As when the chariot and horses, both 

''Of fire,'* Elijah from Blisha took; 

As when to Him the ' ' angels ministered ' ^ — 

To Him of Nazarth — He having fasted through 

Appointed * 'forty days and forty nights,'* 

And suffered the temptation, of the ground: 

To turn the stones to bread, to satisfy 

His hunger — of the pinnacle : to try, 

Presumptuously, the Providence of God — 

And of the mountain : that He bend the knee 

To Evil, for ' ' the kingdoms of the world ' ' — 

Meeting them promptly : ' ' Not by bread alone 

' ' One lives, but by the words from mouth of God ! * * — 

"Thou Shalt not tempt the Lord thy God!" and: ''Get 

"Behind me Satan! Thou shalt worship but 

' ' The Lord thy God ! Him only shalt thou serve ! ' * — 

Thus teaching for the ages that the things 

Objective weigh not with subjective facts 

In their importance — that the things of Three 

Dimensions fade — realities in Fourth 

Dimension — whose He was the while He dwelt 

In Three Dimensions — so empowered that 



10 HOPE UNDEFERRED 

The laws of Three Dimensions He could use. 

Or abrogate, or quicken, or supplant, 

By laws of Fourth Dimension — making wine, 

Upon the water walking, stilling storm. 

Restoring sight and hearing, power to walk, 

Raising the dead, and giving, now and then, 

Glimpses of his substantial body, and 

Of those, so bodied, who 'd already passed 

Beyond the veil, to freedom in the Fourth 

Dimension : as when Peter, James and John 

He took * * apart, ' ' and * ' in a mountain ' ' was 

** Transfigured" in their sight. His ''garments'* e'en 

So gleaming ** white" no ** fuller" could them ** white,' 

The while His face was shining "as the sun," 

By Moses and Elijah companied. 

They standing plainly in the vision of 

The chosen Three as He Himself — 

Of His substantial body, which we call 

His Resurrection Body — which was seen, 

In dawning of "the first day of the week," 

By Mary Magdalene, first, and by 

The women, by the Ten, in hiding from 

Their enemies, the door upon them locked, 

Thomas not present, by th ' Eleven, still 

The door abolt, with Thomas there, and all 

Amaze that He should through the wall appear. 

Not visiting, with impious finger, hand, 

The wounds in Palms or in the Blessed Side, 

No longer "faithless but believing" all, 

Prostrate, with : "Lord!" not only, but: "My God!" 

And still by others seen. How many ? We 've 

But hint, "Five hundred brethren at once .... 

"And last of all ... . of one .... born out ... 

of time ! ' ' — 
There being "out of time" in such a case! 
And is there Fourth Dimension ? still is asked, 
Astoundingly, by members of His Church ! 
"Quo vadis?" as on Appian Way, He stopped 
St. Peter, human, fleeing martyrdom; 
And I have heard a soldier say that to 
Him came the Risen One, on lonely post—: ., 



HOPE TJNDEFERRED 11 

The Risen One, Ascended and Returned. — 

Why not? — The day for such experience past? — ' 

The way between the Seen and the Unseen, 

Between the Three Dimensions and the Fourth 

Dimension, once well known, may it not be 

That it was lost, forgotten, through non-use, 

E 'en by the Church, appointed it to keep 

Repaired through Font and by her Altar High — 

Through Her neglect — She having sinned away 

Her opportunities in Higher Things, 

Involving lower, if there lower be, 

"When all are consecrated to the High? — 

She having near Her Altars golden calves — 

Her vested choirs, her organs, trained and tuned. 

To please the ear of sensuosity — 

Her preachers' voices lowered, hushed, in fear 

Of wrong incorporate for selfish ends — 

Her greatest branch, in numbers, wealth, extent 

Among the sons of men, with flopping flag 

Of Three Dimensions o'er her rusty cross — 

Some other branches quite distinctly more 

The national and less the catholic — 

And some contemptible, in caring for 

Their creeds, as small as Nero's leaden charm — - 

And some, as much, as sorry vestibules 

To circles of respectability— 

And other some .... But why go railing on? . . . . 

If She were what the Founder, through the Twelve, 

Intended She should be — the Body of 

The Holy Ghost, the Mystic Brotherhood 

Of Fourth Dimension, working in the Three 

Dimensions, loving each and serving all, 

Would button-touching late have called the world 

To war, which reason thought impossible ? — 

Would maidenhood be swooning, touching beast? — • 

Would mothers, lovers, wives be drowned in tears? — 

Would dogs and horses bleed with bleeding men? — 

Would trenches slash the breast of mother-earth, 

And tons and other tons explosive wound her? — 

Would men by millions perish as the rats 

Which feed on offal under rotten wharves, 



12 HOPE UNDEFERRED 

Through mechanism, or, as pests which gnaw 

The vines, through noisome spray and gas, and fire, 

Or drop from dizzy heights, by shrapnel found, 

The birds of prey they are, from choice or call, 

Or drown in water, by the mine disturbed, 

Or by torpedo from the submarine, 

Or smother, victims with the monstrous thing? — 

Would latest horror have been thought or dreamed — 

The 'Hank "-car with the armor-hide, propelled 

By power in its entrails generate. 

Moving regardless of the crater, or 

The trench, while coughing, belching, oozing wounds. 

And death, and devastation general? — 

Would there be need for begging that the poor 

Unfortunate be fed and clothed and cared ? — 

Would death be what it is to more and more. 

Who speak of After-life with grin, and say, 

With ghastly mirth : "In both the places I 

* ' Have friends ! ' ' and force a laugh when brutal voice 

Expresses confidence in worms and bones ? — 

Would She so little militate against 

Her inner foes, such as Cupidity 

And Envy, chiefest two, without whom not 

Another two, the haughty Arrogance 

And noisy Discord, friends of meanest as 

Of highest of the pests, who thin Her ranks 

Of battle, widely flung along the line 

Uncertain 'twixt the Three Dimensions and 

The Fourth, and it disturb, in holding back 

The Devil and his gnashing crew from man. 

As, also, in Her showing forth of Heav'n? — 

For Fourth Dimension hath both Heav'n and Hell, 

Beneath the law of correlation — ^law 

In Three Dimensions having pow'r as well — 

The grape that's sour necessitating sweet, 

The sweet the sour — no this without the that! 

But still the question buzzes. — Further proof. 

To those who see and hear with other eyes 

And ears than those v\^hich grasp phenomena 

Of Three Dimensions? Young the clergyman, 

Not knowing that the Devil, World and Flesh 



HOPE UNDEFERRED 13 

Are ever trouble making in the Church, 

And worried over many things awry, 

Among them, I remember, question : If 

The Sacramental-lights should stand upon 

Re-altar? — question tangled more by their 

Presentment, as memorial, by a soul 

Of piety unquestioned — question which, 

It seemed, would rend the local church atwain. 

With other rendings imminent. His brows 

Contracted, in the watches deep of night, 

He sat and tried to ponder, wondering : 

How all could end but in a dreary waste? — ; 

And why the tongues of saints more liable 

To bursting into flame, *'set fire of Hell," 

Than those of sinners? — Why they pleasure took 

In scorching him, though not in least to blame? — 

And why . . . . ? .... But, suddenly, the frown 

was gone ! 
A hand was laid upon his head, and, though 
No voice, was uttered : ' * Worry not my son ! 

* * 'Twill all be right ! — In God 's good time ! ' ' — The hand 
And speech his father's, who had passed, too soon. 

To Fourth Dimension, as we comprehend, 
Saying: *'It may be that my son is sent 

* * To take my place — to wear the stole I 've worn !".... 
How was the father known ? .... Mysterious 

The facts of Fourth Dimension! .... But '*a peace 

"Which passeth understanding" charmed the youth 

As, kneeling, lisped he : " Now I lay me down ! ' 

As he retired, and when, refreshed, he rose. 

And as he, after, met what was to meet — 

Till came the chilling doubt ; which ever comes. 

Regarding the arisen "from the dead," 

Or other revelation from the Fourth 

Dimension, matt 'ring not its character — > 

The doubt so sure to paralyze the sense 

Through which such revelations reach the soul! 

The father's touch was never felt again; 
But there was as a consciousness of him 
In presence, when the son would hear, as oft 



> f 



14 HOPE UNDEFERRED 

He did, relations from the earnest lips 

Of others, which recalled the father's touch — 

The memory as vivid as the fact 

Remembered — surely fact — though it might be 

That it was but a passing breath of air 

Through open window — thought which always drove 

The father, or a sense of him, away, 

Leaving the filial spirit cold and void — 

Till came to him another story of 

The Fourth Dimension — ^by the father staged? — 

Only sometimes from those who, by the font, 

Through confirmation, had the altar's right, 

Or of that sacred right advantage took; 

And always unexpectedly they came: 

As when, in weariness of constant form 

And stiff conventionality — the need 

Of which none better knew — abroad, awheel. 

In toggery befitting, having topped 

A hill, dismounting 'neath some mighty elms. 

He, seating him at road-house table, called 

For glass refreshing, to be served by one, 

By manner, form and beaming featured told 

To be by right proprietor of such a place — 

Fully a man of Three Dimensions, all 

Complete — no evidence that he had sense 

For Fourth Dimension — save in dreamy eye 

And bright — ^by glint in which 'twas seen that he 

His customer was estimating at 

His value — seeing he was not of Three 

Dimensions only — that he had to do. 

In some capacity, with things of Fourth 

Dimension — using other v^^ords in thought, 

No doubt. Invited him to come again. 

Again. And still again. And when the time 

Was ripe, and circumstances fitted, led 

The way to upper floors, and there, before 

The portrait of a lovely foreign dame, 

"With streaming eyes and choking voice, told how. 

Before the day of wireless, or the flash 

Of information else, before the day 

Of rapid transit, he, a wayward boy, 



HOPE UNDEFERRED 15 

Was sorely wounded, in the lonely bush 

Of far Australia — bodily — to death? — 

And, mentally, by thought that he might die 

His family not knowing ; but there came 

A letter from the mother, saying she 

Had present been and seen the "accident,'' 

Enclosing money for his passage home; 

Which reached, described she, in detail minute, i 

The incident, occurrences therewith, 

In all material surroundings framed, 

Of growths, of sandy spot, dim stars above ; 

And still related how, in later yearSj 

He, ever restless, crossed another sea, 

And how, in New World's chief metropolis, 

He, one day, stood in conversation with 

Another, over ordinary point 

Of business, when : ' ' My mother 's dead ! " he cried. 

In starting back. He'd seen her dear old face. 

As plainly as the one on canvas, there ; 

And she had smiled a smile, not of the Three 

Dimensions, but, supremely, of the Fourth! 

Repeating these relations, I was asked, 

By friend, a veteran : * ' Have ever told 
'How I attained my captaincy?" Had not. 
'On eve of battle of the Wilderness^ 
'I found me lounging in my captain's tent. 
'A look of deep solemnity upon 
'His rugged face, his eyelids drooped, he said: 
' 'Lieutenant, where I've never marched, I see 
' 'A field, in undulations, with a draw, 
' ' Through which is running-water from a spring, 
' 'Upon the banks of which are berry- vines. 
' ' 'Mong these, this way, I fall tomorrow noon — > 
' 'A bit before! .... Yes, yes, I'm coming!' " . . . . 

*'Who 
'Apostrophized?"! . ... "I do not know! . . . . 

But this 
' Is sure : It came as he had prophesied ! .... 
'And in his pocket found a letter, which 
' Related how his fiancee was gone ! " .... 



16 HOPE XJNDEFERRED 

''What more connections there may be," I said, 

''Between the Three Dimensions and the Fourth 

"May be unknown; but, surely, one is Love!" 

And then I told of how, at service close. 

There came a man to me and asked if he 

Might see me in my study, and, we there. 

Told how, when he a boy, an uncle came 

On visit from a distant land, how he, 

From semicircle, lighted by a fire 

In open grate, sprang to his feet, with cry: 

* * Marie ! My child ! ' ' — to subsequently say, 

He'd seen a daughter rise upon her bed. 

Extend her arm, and force her working lips 

fo: " 'Father!' " .... Features set, while others 

smiled. 
He marked the hour 'Twas then the daughter 

died, 
And died exactly as he 'd seen her die — 
At home — with thought of father far abroad ! .... 

These incidents, and more of kindred stamp, 

I told, one evening, in a circle sure, 

My "pearls not casting to the swine" — ^though I 

Confess I ever joy in doing so, 

And further joy in saving what they'd "tread," 

And further still in breaking renders' "teeth;" 

These joys a salve to what of "rends" I get — 

Simply because there were no porkers there — 

Remembering, He, also, sent the Twelve 

To preach the Gospel wheresoe'er they went—* 

That universal are the human "swine" — 

And that another, under Him, advised: 

"Out season be thou instant, well as in!" 

And of the incidents the one which brought 

A "pearl" was that of Fourth Dimension band 

Between the mother and the wand 'ring son. 

Uniting them wide oceans o'er and in 

And through the lands antipodal — the word 

Australia the connection of events : 

Two Irish boys their fortunes thought to seek 

Beyond the seas. Australia was their choice. 



HOPE UNDETERRED 17 

The years went by. The one the father wrote. 

That he was well and doing well. More years 

Went by. He wrote again — that he was rich — 

Copartnershiping with his Irish mate. 

More years were gone. The father had a — dream ? 

It seemed not that. He came to consciousness 

From deepest sleep. Was wide awake. And in 

The room there was a person. 'Twas his son ! 

A point on which he never had a doubt, 

And said the son : * ' I 'm drowned ! .... In well ! . . . . 

And by 
**My mate!" .... The father said no single word. 
Another lapse of years. The other of 
The two adventurers returned to land 
Of birth. He called upon the father of the one. 
The father said the word : * * You drowned my son ! 
**And — when?" The father gave the date. **And — 

where ? ' ' 
The father named the well. And after this. 
In court, he said: **What I have seen, I've seen! 
**What I have heard I've heard! The prison has 
**No terror! All the world's a prison since 
**I lost my boy — through him!— Thejnurderer!" — 
Transfixing with his index-finger, then, 
The one whom he accused — most fatally! 

A ** pearl" — though black! .... Take one of richest 

glow — 
Noiess experience, 'twould seem, of Fourth 
Dimension : Where Ohio 's crystal flood 
Flowed through the stately woods in elden day, 
Later, by grassy valleys, meadowed hills, 
And, now, 'tween shores by factories oppressed, 
A very home of Three Dimensions, there 
I sat, the guest of one who lorded well 
A mighty enterprise of soot and smoke, 
And, the occasion rising, sneered my sneer 
At what is not of our dull senses five. 
To be reproved, to my surprise, from such 
A source: *' Young man, I charge you cease to hold 
**A thing impossible because you've not 



18 HOPE UNDEFERRED 

* Experienced it, or something similar! 
*No equal evidence of lack of mind, 

* Or mind unused ! . . . . Excuse the plainness ! . , . . 

But 

* 'Tis for your good, and out of bitterness 
*That I was once a senseless sneerer at 
'The possibility of what we call 

'Things of the spirit — of the Spirit Land — 

'Of Fourth Dimension — put it as one may — 

'The richest speech too poor to put it well — 

'Or so that they of Three Dimensions catch 

'The meaning — 'spiritually discerned,' 

'The Bible says — to which we turn, and must, 

'In trying to convey that which is of 

'The Fourth Dimension. Sneering ceased with me, 

'My daughter dead, just blooming into more 

'Than maidenhood. The ass I'd been to sneer! 

'When all my pride was crushed, my prejudice, 

'When callouses were on my knees, when came 

'The tears, when I was 'as a weaned child,' 

'Once, in the twilight, came my daughter back! 

'She came again! .... Again! .... And still she 

comes ! 
"Would sneer if such experience you had?" .... 

Offended ? .... No ! .... Convinced that he had 

seen 
His daughter in substantial body ? .... That 
His claim was honest ! .... And it flashed on me, 
How asinine to say another has 
Not sensed that which objector has not sensed, 
E 'en in the region of Dimensions Three ! — 
An universal asininity? — 
I tell of having seen, in deep Southwest, 
A sunflower-stalk so large and very firm 
That it was used to hold the chain w^hich held 
Impatient cow while she was being milked — 
I tell this in another region, where 
The sunflower's cherished as an ornament — 
I tell it seriously, as simple truth — 
And smile to hide my irritation at 



HOPE UNDEFERRED 19 

Reception — with equestrian laugh ! — 

And may not things of Fourth Dimension be 

As real as those of Three — more real, indeed? — - 

Hast heard of Bayard Taylor charming tale? — 

He walked with grammar of the Greek in hand. 

Bothered, distraughtly fumbling in his hair, 

As though he were a school-boy, though he'd come 

To be a man of over fifty. — ''What — 

** Cramming a language dead?" a passer asked. — 

**Why not?" — "You don't expect to use it here?" — ■ 

**If not, I'll use it — There!" — "And you believe 

**In immortality?" — "More sure of it 

* * Than of the life I now am living, or, 

* * It may be, I am dreaming ! ' ' — If an ass 
To question what I have not sensed myself 
In Three Dimensions, double ass am I 

To question the reality of dreams. 
And triple ass to question those who tell 
Of Fourth Dimensional experiences, 
Quadrupal ass to sneer at anything 
Contingent on the accident, or on 
Discovery, or on superior sense ! 

Lost in the depths of what was then the Great 

Mid-Continental Desert, first I saw. 

In sheet blown from a passing caravan, 

A squibby notice of the phonograph, 

And muttered : * ' Nonsense ! ' ' — Weary, weak, oppressed, 

Upon my bed in hospital, I lay, 

When word was brought that, — ^bird-like, — gasless ship 

Had sailed the air : " It can not be ! " I said, — 

Cable defective, I had failed to reach 

My correspondent on the other shore, 

And wondered if the "wireless" e'er would come, 

And shook my head, contemptuous of the thought! — 

But soon I heard the ' ' record " of a voice ; 

And, then, I saw a biplane mount and soar ; 

And, later, on the Seventh Sea, our boat 

About to founder, there was sent the "S. 0. S." — 

Are there not "records" of the voices of 

Those from the Fourth Dimension here awhile ? — 



20 HOPE UNDEFERRED 

Have they not mastered Three Dimension's laws — 

Impulsively — with spontaneity ? — 

Are not relations possible to be 

Between the Three Dimensions and the Fourth ? — 

Question suggesting aged gentleman, 

Religious outcast by the most supposed. 

I but a boy, he called me to him once, 

And told a story which he 'd seldom told : 

He had a business friend, when young, who held 

To what he saw not — immortality — 

A life in Fourth Dimension — that of Three 

Dimensions, or its fever-dream, at end. 

They entered into compact, that the first 

To go — if going proved not last of him — 

Should come, to let the other know that still 

He was. The filling of the compact fell 

Upon the friend — it to be filled. And filled 

It was. The other lay, one night, awake — 

Thinking, so far as, in his drowsiness, 

He thought, of ordinary things — the things 

Of Three Dimensions — duties of the day 

To come — occurrences of day last past — 

In all their dusty, sweaty dreariness — 

Their disappointments and their gleams of hope — 

*'When, suddenly, I blinked, and dodged, and jouked, 

**And drew the covers over head and ears!'* 

The gentleman assured me, with a laugh. 

**Over the footboard of my bed my friend 

* * Was leaning — with his dear old, quizzing smile ! ' ' . . 

And, as I sing, there comes a history 

Of master warned to stay a backward step. 

Or there 'd be hurting of a dog — described, — 

Though never seen by warner — dog, which, late, 

Had left the master's heel. — For life Unseen? — 

In Fourth Dimension? — There to welcome him? — 

How thrilled by such a greeting he would be ! . . . « 

In death is liberation from the cell 

Of criminality — or real or trumped; 

From thatj with treadmill of the ordered task; 



HOPE UNDEFERRED 21 

From that of duty, which should be performed ; 

From that of love of Three Dimension things ; 

From that whose walls Ambition's pinions break, 

And Faith's, and Hope's, and ''greatest" Charity *s; 

And from the prison which the cells contains — 

From Matter's Three Dimensions, dark and hard. — 

To what? Oblivion? The cell of cells, 

To normal mind, to be preferred to that — 

For self as for the other ! Can it be. 

When Ealeigh's head rolled on the thither side 

The block, his body in the hither dust — 

The Three Dimensions head, and body worn — 

That Fourth Dimension Raleigh suffered hurt? — -'^ 

Reason, as well as broken-pinioned Faith, 

And Hope, and Charity reject the thought! — Q 

No, no ! In Fourth Dimension liberty, 

In concentration void of effort, pain. 

He knows the secrets of the Past, the Now; 

In memory he lives again the whole 

Of what he lived in Three Dimensions, with 

But smiles — regarding as indifferent 

The things the most important to him there. 

With priv 'leges of pardoning, divine. 

Of begging pardon, far diviner still, 

And, joyous, wings the future, knowing what 

Shall be, for him, his nation, and his race. 

Accompanied by folk he loved in Three 

Dimensions, women, children, men, and dogs; 

For freedom in the Fourth Dimension is 

For all who in the Three Dimensions have 

A consciousness of self, in joy and pain. 

' * In Him we being have, and live and move ! ' ' 

''And who are 'we?' " "Without your Father not 

"A sparrow falls!" Who cares for "you," He cares 

For it ! With Him is neither great nor small ! 

In Three Dimensions, we "together groan!" 

In Fourth Dimension shall we not enjoy? 



22 HAS EVER MORTAL DONE BETTER ? 



HAS EVER MORTAL DONE BETTER? 

A WREN warbles under my window ; 

From top of a neighboring tree, 
A thrasher is flooding the region 

With wonderful melody ; 
To tangle of branches, a-blooming, 

Which crawl o'er the casement and spill, 
A humming-bird darts, iridescent — 

At flower is buzzingly still; 
A cat-bird is scolding in thicket, 

With occasional sweetness of tone. 
Suggesting a possible singing, 

Which equals the thrasher alone. 

Through song and through form and through feather, 

As well as through bloom and through scent, 
I'm charmed to a sensuous pleasure. 

To something like active content ; 
So charmed that my thinking's suspended 

Till I hear a ' * Chip-chippy-chip-chip ! ' ' 
From being, with thumb to be measured, 

On a paling, at top of the tip, 
A bit of a plain little creature. 

With crown of a brick-powder red ; 
Its plumage at throat all a-ruf9e, 

So up that tips backwards its head ! 
No opera-singer, surely. 

Could ever more confident be 
Of power, inherited, cultured. 

Than chippy, so common and wee ! 

And, chippy, to thee I uncover : 

It is certainly fitting I should ; 
Has ever a mortal done better 

Than best, very best, that he could ? 



OF ONE WHO HAS THOUGHT 23 



OF ONE WHO HAS THOUGHT 



(75 the reclining statue of the late Bishop Potter in 
the Potter Memorial Chapel in the Cathedral of St. John 
the Divine too exactly a likeness, too little an idealiza- 
tion?) 



In shaking my head, in chapel alone, 
I think of the dead, whose monument prone 
My fancies confine to things of the earth— = 
Till musings combine in giving a birth 
To vision sublime, wide-founded and high, 
Immenser than time and fending the sky. 

This vision to me from prophecies fine 
Of what shall be St. John the Divine,. 
Uploomingly grand, metropolis o'gr, 
Regarding the land and sea-fondled shorg*— 
A symbol supreme that man-to-man-dear 
Is more than a dream. Hereafter and here. 

The chapel but niche, the prone to contain^ 
In great spaces which America's Fane 
Shall cover, embrace, enfloor and endome. 
For each of our race a refuge and home : 
Both chapel and prone so modestly small 
I have to be shown to find them at all ; 
But large in the thought, in hope, in the trust 
That back shall be brought the on^e who is dust^ 
In form, to the throngs of ages unborn. 
Not knowing of wrongs, of selfishness shorn, 
Ascending to where St. John the Divine 
Bulks large in the air, to visit their shrine; 
For nobler than fane constructed by man 
Is home of the brain empowered to plan. 

Idealize, play with the one who was naught; 

Let each feature stay of the one who has thought. 



3477-1 «3 
Lot 74 



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